The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

Pen Ohmsford and his companions sailed the Skatelow through the northeast skies over the foothills fronting the Charnal Mountains in search of the village of Taupo Rough and Kermadec. Finding the former would provide them with a temporary haven; the latter, with the guide they needed to reach Stridegate. As Maturen of the Taupo Rough Rock Trolls, it was within Kermadec’s power to give them the aid they required in their search for the Ard Rhys. The Trolls might be reluctant to help outlanders in most situations, but where it concerned Grianne Ohmsford, Kermadec would see that an exception was made.

It took them the remainder of the night, but they were sailing at quarter speed, slow enough that they could track movement on the ground and watch the horizon for shadows that didn’t belong. Caution was needed, for there were things hunting them besides the Druids, and they were all too aware of how desperate their circumstances had become. They were lucky to have escaped the creature that had killed Gar Hatch and his Rovers and taken Cinnaminson as prisoner, and they were reasonably sure it was not done tracking them. But even if they avoided that particular monster, there was nothing to say that others hadn’t been sent to hunt them, as well. At flight from a world in which all the safety nets they had once relied on had been taken down, they could not afford to make a mistake.

The boy came back on deck after Cinnaminson was asleep and, with Khyber’s help, took down the bodies of Gar Hatch and his Rover cousins, wrapped them in sheeting, and stowed them belowdecks for burial at a later time. Then he relieved Tagwen at the helm. While he checked the Skatelow’s course and speed, he repeated to the Dwarf and the Elven girl what Cinnaminson had told him. For a while afterwards, no one said much of anything. Tagwen offered to take the wheel back so that Pen could get some sleep, but the boy insisted on staying at the helm through the night, just in case his flying experience might be needed for evasive action. Having gotten Cinnaminson back in one piece, he was not about to chance losing her again to carelessness of his own making.

So Khyber and Tagwen slept instead, and Pen was still at the helm when dawn broke in a slow brightening of the skies through gaps in a wall of massive peaks that rose before them. The stars and moon had gone, and the darkness was receding west, the new day a promise of the possibility, at least, of something better and safer. Pen’s eyes were gritty and blurred by then, and his need for sleep was acute. When Tagwen appeared with a simple breakfast of bread and cheese he had scavenged from the supply room below, the boy was so grateful he could barely speak. He ate ravenously and, after looking in on Cinnaminson to be sure she was all right, went off to bed.

He awoke near midday when Khyber shook his shoulder and told him to come on deck. “I think we’ve found Taupo Rough,” she announced with a grin. “Come see.”

He rose and went topside, finding Cinnaminson there, as well, come awake a few hours earlier to join the Elven girl and the Dwarf in the pilot box. Looking out over the ship’s bow to the landscape below, he saw a cluster of dark stone buildings and walls stacked in close proximity to one another on a low bluff and backed up against a cliff face that was riddled with caves connected by ladders and walkways. His initial impression was of a warren that probably ran as deep into the mountain as it extended out from it. Trolls of all sizes and shapes were moving about, but there seemed to be little interest in the Skatelow’s approach. No defensive maneuvers were being undertaken, and from what Pen could make out, there were few guards of any sort.

The boy knew almost nothing about Trolls. He had seen a few in his life, some of them had come to Patch Run to employ his parents. But his travels had not taken him into the deep Northland, where the tribes made their homes, and Trolls by and large did not venture south of their traditional homelands. He thought that he had heard his mother speak in the Troll tongue once or twice, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Can we communicate with them?” he asked impulsively.

“I can speak a little of their language,” Tagwen ventured. He shrugged. “It won’t matter, once we find Kermadec.”